Gawker versus 4chan

While Gawker has posted a notice indicating that it is the user names and passwords of people who comment on their web site that have been compromised, analysis of the file released by the crackers themselves indicates that the breach extends to employees of Gawker, includes credentials for internal systems (Google applications, collaboration tools) used at the company, includes a leak of Gawker’s custom source code, includes credentials of Gawker employees for other web sites, includes FTP credentials for other web sites Gawker has worked with, includes access to Gawker’s statistics web site, and includes the e-mails of a number of the users who left comments at Gawker as well as users of lifehacker.com, kotaku.com, and gizmodo.com.

The evidence also suggests the attackers have had access to Gawker’s internal systems for a period of time that is at least a month, and that they gained root level access to servers the Gawker Media web properties are hosted on.